Jessica Cuello – Poems | Interim Poetry & Poetics

Jessica Cuello

The Bird Girl

red as the wagon in the yardand plastic things are uglywhen they’re old

I took a pill for thatfor my child’s mouthsmaller than mine

There were seeds knottedthere were walls of me that slidaway, there was the red sea

Before I knit you in the wombI knew youand after I was never known

and when the world left meI wept like Joseph,father of no baby,

whose wife chose God,God the adultererGod loved only Her

Her bird gasp and bird gallowsTiny annunciationNest of the dead

Jessica Cuello is the author of Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016) and Hunt, a response to the absent feminine in Moby Dick and winner of the 2016 Washington Prize from The Word Works. She is also the author of the chapbooks Curie, By Fire, and My Father's Bargain, and she has been a recipient of the New Letters Poetry Prize and a Saltonstall Fellowship.